Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population • Hacker News Board

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#161

Post by mensetmanusman » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 2:21 AM UTC

danielbln wrote: post #22

mensetmanusman wrote: post #15

When I lived in Germany, I learned that one interesting, cultural aspect is that they don’t drink nearly as much tapwater as in America. This means everyone buys water in plastic containers at the grocery store, all this plastic is PET-based, and PEG is always present in small quantities in that water (because water is slightly acidic, and acids disassociate the PET molecule).

As a German I find that to be a pretty wild generalization, especially comparing it to the US where tap water quality varies massively (Oregon vs say Michigan (Flint...)). German tap water tends to be quite good. I live in Berlin, where tap water is excellent (albeit with a lot of minerals/calcium). The vast majority of people I know drink tap water, sometimes filtered, sometimes with CO2 added, but tap water nonthel…

Stats show German’s drink a lot of mineral water though…

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#162

Post by epgui » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 2:36 AM UTC

spondylosaurus wrote: post #160

epgui wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antibodies do not target bacteria or viruses. They target protein that are present on bacteria or viruses. Protein are not alive, but they are a component of live organisms. Protein present in peanut butter come from the plant that produces peanuts, which is just as alive (if not more) than microorganisms. The only difference between the two are the time scales involved, and the natural selection forces in play... Bu…

> Protein present in peanut butter come from the plant that produces peanuts, which is just as alive (if not more) than microorganisms. Right, but peanut butter itself is not alive. I never claimed that it's inorganic, only that a morsel of peanut butter is not a living creature, and specifically not a living creature that makes (most people) sick. > Your immune system has no notion of whether an antigen is alive or…

Sounds like we're in agreement! I may have been picky about wording.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#163

Post by kijin » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 3:06 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #112

kijin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern fast food is deliberately engineered to make it as addictive as possible while still being palatable and cheap to produce, in order to maximize sales. That sounds more nefarious than I intended, so let me rephrase it. Modern fast food is the result of rapidly iterating, debugging, and optimizing recipes in a huge market for the last 70 years, leaving only the best selling, low cost, consistently reproducible r…

this is clearly a thing that has happened, and it is a crucial link in the chain, but there's still a missing link. wouldn't it be more profitable if those recipes happened to have low caloric density, like coca-cola? then you could sell each customer six meals a day instead of three, and they'd be more profitable because they'd mostly be made out of water, which is cheaper than deodorized canola oil and palm oil, mu…

Coca-Cola is indeed highly profitable, but American consumers have indicated time and again that they want some real bread and beef to go with that Coca-Cola. They want to feel reasonably full, and they can't come back 6 times a day no matter what, because they have to work in order to pay for your burger.

You're not going to make a large profit if you diverge too far from this social norm. Don't think like a startup, because we're talking about traditional multinational businesses here.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#164

Post by xeckr » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 3:11 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #34

xeckr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look like obesity is infectious, so calling it a pandemic doesn't seem appropriate. The cure is eating less and exercising more. Many have done it.

there is substantial, but not convincing, evidence that much current obesity is due to an infectious etiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectobesity the cure you suggest fails on 95% of obese people, though like many pseudoscientific quack cures, it does appear to work at first, and actually does work in a few cases the implied etiology doesn't hold up to the most casual critical thinking: resting and eating hav…

Calling diet and exercise "pseudoscientific quack cures" is by far the funniest coping strategy I have witnessed in a long time.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#165

Post by kragen » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 3:33 AM UTC

kijin wrote: post #163

kragen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is clearly a thing that has happened, and it is a crucial link in the chain, but there's still a missing link. wouldn't it be more profitable if those recipes happened to have low caloric density, like coca-cola? then you could sell each customer six meals a day instead of three, and they'd be more profitable because they'd mostly be made out of water, which is cheaper than deodorized canola oil and palm oil, mu…

Coca-Cola is indeed highly profitable, but American consumers have indicated time and again that they want some real bread and beef to go with that Coca-Cola. They want to feel reasonably full, and they can't come back 6 times a day no matter what, because they have to work in order to pay for your burger. You're not going to make a large profit if you diverge too far from this social norm. Don't think like a startup…

i don't think it's a question of social norms. if people were adhering to pre-mcdonalds social norms, they wouldn't be going somewhere besides their house (a restaurant, but one without waiters) and sitting on brightly colored plastic benches eating mechanically separated chicken glued together with modified food starch cut with texturized soy protein

people's appetite is evidently for calories, and they commonly regulate their caloric intake or metabolic rate to within 0.5% in order to maintain their level of obesity. social norms are not capable of that kind of precision

consider, if you gain only 5 kg in ten years, which many obese mcdonalds eaters in the usa do, that's a caloric excess of 5 kcal per day. half a gram of fat per day. that's 0.3% of a metabolic rate of 1666 kcal per day or 0.2% of 2500 kcal/day. if they were to eat 0.3% less calories than they were burning instead of 0.3% more, they'd be losing 5 kg every ten years, not gaining it

so the homeostatic feedback mechanism is almost working. it's clearly not completely broken. its error is well under 1%. but it does evidently have a systematic error across the population. and fast-food optimization for profit by itself is an insufficient explanation for that

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#166

Post by samus » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 6:22 AM UTC

spondylosaurus wrote: post #160

epgui wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antibodies do not target bacteria or viruses. They target protein that are present on bacteria or viruses. Protein are not alive, but they are a component of live organisms. Protein present in peanut butter come from the plant that produces peanuts, which is just as alive (if not more) than microorganisms. The only difference between the two are the time scales involved, and the natural selection forces in play... Bu…

> Protein present in peanut butter come from the plant that produces peanuts, which is just as alive (if not more) than microorganisms. Right, but peanut butter itself is not alive. I never claimed that it's inorganic, only that a morsel of peanut butter is not a living creature, and specifically not a living creature that makes (most people) sick. > Your immune system has no notion of whether an antigen is alive or…

To help clear up the disagreement: the difference I had in mind is that things like peanut butter and PEG cannot adapt to escape the immune response. Viruses and bacteria can. Antibodies against them can be detected after an infection, but they might not be effective at all.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#167

Post by SergeAx » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 10:34 AM UTC

PEG here is polyethylene glycol. It is used as a laxative agent and also as a bulking agent for making other medications. I wish it was deciphered right in the headline.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#168

Post by 4death4 » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 11:42 AM UTC

cameronh90 wrote: post #91

thrwwyunpopular wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prevalence of sugar in modern diets along with how ludicrously industrialized food has become, particularly in America, is likely still the main cause for obesity rates. People point out all these other secondary factors but we should really focus on the 80%, the big ticket item. It's damn near impossible to find nutritiously acceptable breakfast, lunch and dinner choices near the office in big cities in America.…

Various industry sources and think tanks (with various biases, including IfG, IEA, Czarnikow) suggest sugar consumption has fallen very significantly in the UK and Australia since 1970, without any apparent impact on obesity rates. However, I can't find trustworthy original academic research on it, which makes it difficult to draw any firm conclusions. In any case, it doesn't appear that sugar consumption has risen d…

Obviously there could be many factors. I want to point out, though, that a caloric deficit is a marginal difference. That means small changes in the base calorie intake can lead to a many-fold increase in your caloric deficit.

As an example, let’s say you go from a healthy adult at 18 years old and 160 lbs, to an obese adult at 40 and 300 pounds. That’s 140 pounds over 22 years. If a pound of weight is gained after 3,500 excess calories, then this person only consumed roughly 60 extra calories a day. If they consumed only 20 excess calories a day, they would be 195. Overweight, but still relatively healthy. It doesn’t take a lot of sugar to add 40 or 60 calories to someone’s diet and leave everything else unchanged.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#169

Post by benibela » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 9:54 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #15

When I lived in Germany, I learned that one interesting, cultural aspect is that they don’t drink nearly as much tapwater as in America. This means everyone buys water in plastic containers at the grocery store, all this plastic is PET-based, and PEG is always present in small quantities in that water (because water is slightly acidic, and acids disassociate the PET molecule).

And Germans tapwater tastes much better than US tapwater, there is no chlorine

I drink a lot of tapwater (though usually as tea)

I used to drink bottled water, because it is sparkly. I like sparkling water much more than ordinary water.

But I got tired of carrying so many bottles

I bought a CO2 device that should make tapwater sparkling. But lacked fuzz and my mother donated it away. She donates all my stuff

>This means everyone buys water in plastic containers at the grocery store, all this plastic is PET-based, and PEG is always present in small quantities in that water (because water is slightly acidic, and acids disassociate the PET molecule).

My mother only buys glass bottles because of that.